Digital Home Thoughts: Forget Web 2.0, behold Cloud 2!

"The future of our industry now looks totally different than the past. It looks like a sheet of paper, and it’s called the iPad. It’s not about typing or clicking; it’s about touching. It’s not about text, or even animation, it’s about video. It’s not about a local disk, or even a desktop, it’s about the cloud. It’s not about pulling information; it’s about push."

Predictions about the future, or near future are always fun. Marc Benioff's analysis about where the future of the Internet is heading has some interesting points, and as CEO of salesforce.com, a company that has survived a lot of changes, including the original dot com bust. To put things in a nutshell, it seems that he is talking about the shift of the Internet from a tool of work, to a tool of consumption. Sure, we all have had fun with the Internet over the years, from the Hampster Dance to Keyboard Cat but social websites like Facebook and platforms like the iPad have created a new opportunity that is much more consumer focused. I liken it to the difference in how we recorded shows. Way back, when we just got electricity, programming VCRs meant using a cryptic menu system where we used sacred remote controls to say when and which channel we wanted to record. No, it no longer feels like programming, but just saying, I want to record all the new episodes of this show, and the magic box does the rest. Oddly, while touch is touted as a large part of this, I wonder if there is room for gestures and voice to play a part. Touch is certainly natural, but the next logical step if with motions and talking to your devices.